The Farmer’s Blog, February 20, 2016

This is the second blog in the Farmer blog series. In the first we reminded that the Farmer is a fictional character, if one who seems to speak with a resonant voice. I know there is a process that leads to the discovery of the things his character wants to say, I just can’t tell you what it is.

The Farmer argues that mind is something we share. At some future time he is going to compare an individual human mind to a landholding. Think of the men who staked out and worked claims in the old goldfields: he’s going to tell us we each possess mind-holdings, which we work and from which we draw wealth and sustenance. He’s going to say that, but not yet, because it only came to me as I was writing the preceding paragraph, so I’ll think about it and maybe work it another time.

That’s one core Farmer belief, that there is one mind as there is one space, a mindspace we share. But today I want to share a different core Farmer belief, the one I was planning to talk about:

“Every expression creates, at once in all the realms. The bloom, the bird song, the kiss, the curse, the motion of stars in space: expression is creation as the universe renews. To be is to express is to create; they are one.”

First, let me say I had no idea this was coming before it came. I didn’t sit around thinking about how the world is built on the expression of all things, which makes it really cool for me—I love to see these ideas emerge from the wherever-somewhere. It’s almost the best part of writing, the best being seeing some trivial idea put in for colour turn into a full-fledged story line or theme. But I digress.

It’s true, isn’t it, even incontestable: everything that exists in reality expresses its nature at every moment and the cumulative presence of that expression is the world we experience. If you can find a hole in that logic please post it to the share page. It won’t bother me if the Farmer is wrong, remember, he’s fictional. I’m just trying to understand him and to draw him well.

But I think if part of it isn’t true it’s more likely a weakness in the language than in the concept. The world is what we sense, and what we sense is what projects, and what projects is what we are, we and the infinite number of other beings and things that make our world. I’m not saying there isn’t more, that there isn’t something aware or unaware depending on your point of view that mixes and melds and moulds it into the world we know, but the raw material is expression: what the world is, logically, is what the world is.

Expression is everywhere

However, the Farmer isn’t just saying this, he’s using it as a foundation for the point he really wants to make – okay, this is the one I want to make, too, the one that comes out of a lifetime of meditation and contemplation and just plain living. It’s the summary provided at the start of Chapter 18:

“It comes down to this: you and I, we need to take responsibility for what we create, consciously and unconsciously, moment by moment. Ongoing creation seems improbable until we understand that we create in higher realms that have broad and unseen impacts—and that we live in those worlds too. So it’s not what others do or don’t do, it’s Me. It’s us. Right now, right here, as we blossom in this Garden of Light.”

Everything expresses at all times. Humans express in every moment, consciously and unconsciously, and what matters — what is infinitely important, important beyond our current human understanding — is that we express with purpose, and with intention, and so build the moments, the lives and the world we would choose.

That’s why the Farmer, why The Reefsong, even why me, as one light to another.